Monday, January 30, 2012

Home Time

Here's what I've been up to... some home improvement, sweat equity, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes you just have to bear down and do it. The kitty cats (bless their hearts) destroyed almost all of the carpet in the house - a bedroom, staircase and landing. The 2nd bedroom was off limits to them and the rest of the house is tiled. We LOVE tile, especially how it's not destroyed by a few claws and messes. Below is one of the worst corners of carpet, but there were several other spots like this.This was the entrance to the 'cat room.' There is another ripped spot there on the inside, but this texture pattern and stain came from a piece of plastic office chair mat that we had to place under the door to prevent even more carpet rips, plus Duncan had a habit of peeing on the door -- both sides of it, and frequently. I've have scrubbed it with soap many times, but still... and of course the door paint was in pretty poor shape as well. The entire carpeted area was covered in numerous bad stains, mostly from Alex and his IBD (intestinal troubles, poor thing, couldn't keep much of anything down during his last couple of years).A decision to replace the carpet meant that it really made sense to also paint... BEFORE a new carpet goes down, and I have been dreading this job because of the really, really high ceilings. At the highest, they are about 20 ft. (~6.1 m). I've got a start on the stair wall here:

Looking upward at the area, partially done. It's almost as much work to take all the stuff down from the walls as it is to paint them... almost.Here's the color scheme I've picked for the old cat room (soon to be the Polynesian Room), the stair wall and the front living area. Baseboards and doors will be white. We bought zero-VOC paint, which has almost no odor at all, and the carpet is made from recycled bottles or something like that. Anyway, it's 'green'. Sooooo, lots of work done and still ahead for Blueberry, while MrB stays out of the way. This is for the best. I am reasonably handy and he's there for the heavy lifting.